


healthy, free, the world before me

by leetheshark



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Car Sex, Divorce, Implied Past Abusive Spouse, M/M, Mentions of Abusive Parent, Nightmares, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Smoking, just a quick warning: eddie and myra are only kind of broken up in the beginning, offscreen sex, there's one kiss and some cuddling with richie before eddie officially asks for a divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leetheshark/pseuds/leetheshark
Summary: “...You ever been on a road trip?”When Eddie thinks about it, it sounds fucking awful.He can picture it already: the shitty motels, the gas station food, and all thatdriving.And Richie’s probably a terrible driver.But it also sounds like time alone with Richie. No one else, no expectations, no responsibilities. No more denial. No more pretending to be someone Eddie isn’t.Just Richie, and the open road, and open possibilities.(Or: Eddie wants to run, so he and Richie hit the road.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 226





	healthy, free, the world before me

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,  
Healthy, free, the world before me,  
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,  
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,  
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,  
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,  
I do not want the constellations any nearer,  
I know they are very well where they are,  
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,  
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,  
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,  
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

**Song of the Open Road, 1**  
Walt Whitman

Eddie’s consciousness trickles back to him in blurry watercolors and warbled sounds. He sees Richie in the damp underground gloom, and then he blacks out, and then he sees Richie again—but this time, there are too-bright lights behind Richie’s head and Eddie wonders if maybe he’s dead.

Richie’s cheeks are damp and red, like he was crying recently but isn’t anymore. In his haze, Eddie wonders why Richie was crying.

Was it one of the older boys? Did Henry Bowers hurt him? No, that would have been too long ago— _or was it?_ Eddie slips in and out of the waking world, and he gathers slowly but definitively that he’s in the hospital. He wonders if Bowers put him there.

_Did they call his mother? Oh please oh God no, not his mother._

Eddie closes his eyes, and he’s thirteen again. He’s in the hospital after breaking his arm.

He’s half-conscious to begin with, reeling from the revelation at the pharmacy and reeling harder from what happened at Neibolt Street. He’s never broken a bone before and still he knows not to cry, or Sonia will start crying, too. He spent a day in the hospital, then, listening to Sonia’s voice when he didn’t want to and only crying when he knew no one was looking.

But now Richie is here and Sonia isn’t, and Eddie knows he can cry in front of Richie—that even if Richie makes fun of him for it, he doesn’t mean it, and he usually knows not to make fun when it counts.

And then Eddie is forty again, blinking his eyes open with startling clarity. Richie is still there, and it takes Eddie a few seconds to realize that Richie is holding his hand.

Eddie looks up at Richie’s face. His cheeks are still tear-stained, but he’s smiling. “Hey, Eds.”

“Richie?”

“Yeah, man. It’s me.” A tear leaks from the corner of Richie’s eye, and Richie catches it before Eddie can say anything. “I didn’t call your wife,” he confesses, hurried, like he’s been holding onto it for a while. “I told them I did, but I didn’t.”

Eddie isn’t surprised when he hears himself mutter, “Thank God.”  


* * *

  
Loving Eddie at thirteen kind of sucked—but it was better than it could have been, because at least Eddie was safe, unlike most of the other boys.

But it was also sweet sometimes, because Eddie loved Richie back in some way at least, because Eddie hung on Richie just as much as Richie hung on Eddie. Richie thought then that if Eddie ever found out just how Richie loved him, he might be grossed out and never talk to Richie again (and the thought kept him up some nights when he finally began to understand). But at least he wouldn’t hurt Richie, physically anyway, and he thought then that it was the best he could get.

Loving Eddie at thirteen sucked, and it isn’t any easier now—not when it’s been almost thirty years without closure, not when Eddie showed up married, not when Eddie spent ten hours in surgery and almost _died._

He didn’t, though. He didn’t die. And Richie has to remind himself of that, every few minutes, or he feels like he’ll lose his mind. Every time he walks into Eddie’s hospital room, it’s like finding out all over again that Eddie is alive. That he’s going to be okay.

It was Richie’s belief that Eddie would be okay that saved him, when it came down to it. That was what Bill said when Eddie was still in surgery, and if Bill said it, it had to be right. Richie believed that Eddie could still be saved, and so the house at Neibolt Street, in its eerie knowingness, let it be true.

Richie guesses he believes it.

He doesn’t have another explanation for why the house crumbled around Eddie, leaving Richie to scramble through the wreckage to get to him. He also doesn’t have another explanation for why Eddie survived his wound at all, and without any of the long-term complications his doctors were expecting. Maybe there’s something good in the world, after all. Maybe there’s something to balance out all the fear.

The Neibolt thing ended up making for a pretty good story, which Richie can’t appreciate until he’s telling it to Eddie, and the hazy smile on Eddie’s face makes everything feel a little more okay. He tells Eddie about how he scraped the hell out of his arms and legs doing it and needed stitches, but they took Eddie first and left Richie in the waiting room for hours, so Mike and Ben had to go buy supplies and the other remaining Losers cleaned up Richie’s smaller wounds on the bathroom floor.

It reminded Richie of when they were kids, and he and the others (except Mike, because it was before Mike) rescued Ben from Henry Bowers. Richie stayed with him while Eddie, Bill, and Stan went into the pharmacy and Bev helped them steal. It’s a good memory. Richie’s glad to have it back, and Pennywise can go fuck Itself for taking it away in the first place.

He knew, sitting on that floor while the others cleaned him up and trying not to think about whether Eddie would make it, that if Eddie _did_ make it, he’d be horrified by Richie sitting on the bathroom floor covered in open wounds. And Richie was right—Eddie _is._

When he tells Eddie, it’s all part of catching Eddie up to current events. Current events also include Eddie getting stabbed in the face by Henry Bowers at the Townhouse.

“I got stitches in my _face?”_

“Yeah. Don’t worry though, you’re still cute.”

Eddie scrunches up his face, and Richie instantly regrets saying it—was that too real? Did Eddie know he meant it? “You think I’m cute?”

“Nope,” Richie says, but the real answer’s in his easy grin.

Richie stays by Eddie’s side as much as he can, subsisting mostly on vending machine snacks and the parts of Eddie’s meals that Eddie doesn’t want. The hospital has a cafeteria, but it’s too far away from Eddie’s room for Richie to bother.

Most days, he sits in a chair pulled up close to Eddie’s cot until someone drags him away. Sometimes it’s the other Losers, because in the beginning, Eddie’s only allowed a few visitors at a time. (Only one person was allowed to be there when he woke up, and everyone knew without saying that it would be Richie.) Sometimes it’s a nurse telling him that Eddie needs his rest—or every once in a while, that Richie needs rest as much as Eddie does, and that he should go home and sleep. Richie doesn’t tell them that Derry isn’t his home anymore.

It’s four weeks before Eddie’s discharged from the hospital. Four weeks from the day Eddie almost died and they’re standing in the parking lot of the Townhouse after all the others left, autumn sun grazing the asphalt and their faces, two cars and two half-formed plans ahead of them.

Back home. Separate ways. New York and Chicago. And Richie doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to just leave Eddie when he’s spent the past month glued to Eddie’s side, but he’s taken so much from Eddie already that he can’t ask for more.

Even Eddie looking at him feels like taking something.

Eddie’s doing it, now, with those stupid-big eyes that might as well be entire universes when Richie looks back into them, with the way Eddie makes Richie feel _seen._ “Richie?”

“Yeah, buddy?” Even if Richie managed to hide how he feels about Eddie all this time, he’s sure the squeak in his voice gives it away. But if they’re about to part ways, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.

Eddie looks at his suitcases, at his car, back at Richie. And then he sighs. “Fuck. Can I go with you?”

Richie’s hands tighten around the strap of his duffel bag. “What?” Eddie looks dead serious.

“Can I go with you?”

“Like, instead of going home?”

“Yeah.” Eddie’s rambling, full of obvious nervous energy. “I’ll even leave my car here. I don’t care.”

“Eds. You can’t do that.”

Eddie rears back, hackles raised, and if he’s mad at Richie, at least that’s something Richie knows how to deal with. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t fucking do.”

“You have a wife. And a _job.”_

“I don’t give a fuck about any of that right now, okay? I almost fucking died and I don’t want to go back home and I… I just want to go with you. Can I go with you?”

“Okay,” Richie says. _You have no idea how much I want that,_ is what he doesn’t say. “Okay, but are you sure—”

That’s when Eddie kisses him.

_Oh._

It takes Richie’s brain a second to catch up. It takes him another second to realize he should kiss Eddie back. When Eddie pulls away, hands gentle on Richie’s face, everything Richie could say swims around in his head and he ends up with, “Shit, I don’t want to go home either. You ever been on a road trip?”

When Eddie thinks about it, it sounds fucking awful.

He can picture it already: the shitty motels, the gas station food, and all that _driving._ And Richie’s probably a terrible driver.

But it also sounds like time alone with Richie. No one else, no expectations, no responsibilities. No more denial. No more pretending to be someone Eddie isn’t.

Just Richie, and the open road, and open possibilities.

“Fuck it,” Eddie says. Looking up into Richie’s eyes, Eddie doesn’t think Richie’s looked so happy since… well, probably not at all, this time around in Derry. But he probably looked like that when they were kids. He probably looked like that _a lot,_ when they were kids. “Let’s go.”  


* * *

  
Eddie hasn’t spoken to Myra in a month.

He really isn’t that broken up about it.

He thinks of her, though, that first day on the road, with the wind blowing through his clean and unstyled hair and Richie next to him in the driver’s seat. She probably thinks he ran out on her, that his leaving for Derry with barely a word was his leaving forever.

He basically left her already, when you think about it.

So it’s not like he needs to actually _ask_ for a divorce.

_…right?_

It would be messy. Myra would dig, and he’s not ready for that. Since coming back to Derry, Eddie’s been buckling under the weight of new realizations—things that scare him, things he doesn’t fully understand yet, things he wants to keep close to his heart.

Things like how he’s gay, and how he’s been in love with Richie his whole life. Whatever. It’s not like anyone needs to know that.

Richie knows, though. They’ve been driving for a few hours now and sometimes, when Eddie glances over at Richie, he looks _smug._ Or something. Like he’s bottling something up, and it’s either his need to gloat or the imminent threat of vibrating right out of his skin.

They stop at an IHOP for dinner, and over his blueberry pancakes, Eddie asks, “Do you think I should get a divorce?”

Richie’s hand stills where he’s just popped a fry into his mouth, and he talks while he chews. “Are you, like, _thinking_ about it?”

“Am I supposed to be thinking about it?” Eddie bristles. “Am I not supposed to be thinking about it?”

“Considering how you kissed me,” Richie says, and Eddie grimaces, because doing it is one thing, but hearing about it is another. “You should probably get a divorce.”  


* * *

  
When Richie pulls into a motel parking lot off the side of the highway, he can practically feel Eddie radiating paranoia.

“Dude,” Eddie says, white-knuckling the median between the two front seats. “This place is probably crawling with, like, bedbugs and shit.”

“If you’d rather stay in a five-star hotel, man, go nuts. Is that what you had in mind when I said road trip? What’s next, glamping?”

“Whatever.”

“Besides, it’s got, like, Bates Motel vibes. You know? Maybe we’ll get murdered in the shower or something.” Squeaking like violins from the back of his throat, Richie mimes stabbing Eddie through the air. It takes a second for him to realize he said _we_ and _shower_ in the same sentence, and maybe that’s why Eddie’s staring at him so wide-eyed.

Eddie groans. “Jesus.”

“You know, like _Psycho.”_

“Yeah, I know. I’ve seen _Psycho._ Do you think that about every motel?”

“Pretty much.” Richie shrugs. “You know, I kinda had a crush on Norman Bates when I was, like, fifteen. I think he reminded me of you.”

“What the fuck, Richie?”

Richie just shrugs again and starts to get out of the car. “I’ll get us a room. You can stay here if you want. Don’t get murdered.” Somehow, it’s easy to joke about Eddie getting murdered by a person, because at least it’s not a clown.

If it was John Wayne Gacy instead of Norman Bates, maybe it would be different. That’s who Richie’s thinking about as he makes his way to the front office—because most people don’t realize that Gacy never actually killed anyone _while_ dressed as a clown, but Richie knows, because he took a true crime class in college before he quit to focus on his stand-up—and asks the clerk for a room for the night.

“Single or double?”

“Uh.” Richie’s mind screeches to a halt, because they never really talked about it. About what they are. Considering that Eddie’s married and everything, they could just be two bros on a road trip. Two bros who kissed. Even though Richie’s in love with Eddie and he’s pretty sure Eddie’s in love with him, too. And thinking about curling up with Eddie in the same bed almost makes him forget how to speak. “Double.”  


* * *

  
Richie saw Eddie die in the deadlights.

And then he almost saw Eddie die again.

There was a reason he could barely sleep this past month, unless he was beside Eddie’s hospital bed. It comes back violent, wrenching him awake from visions of blood and gore and Pennywise and _Eddie._

The sound of Richie’s own ragged breathing fills his head—gasping for air, Richie isn’t fully sure he won’t suffocate to death, in a shitty highway Bates Motel, on the fear that lives in his bones just as intrinsic as the blood and bone marrow there—until there’s another sound, and a dip in the bed, and Eddie above him. “Richie?”

“Huh?” Eddie’s okay. He’s here. _(For now,_ Richie thinks, until he gets a hold of himself and remembers: that was a month ago. It’s over.) “Yeah?”

“You okay?” There’s a tenderness in Eddie that Richie wouldn’t have expected from him, until he sees it, in the white glow of the streetlights coming through the blinds. In a place like this, it’s never really dark at night.

With Eddie on top of him, it’s almost like it was in the sewer, so Richie sits up, too. “Yeah. Sorry. Nightmare. Did I wake you up?”

“No. I couldn’t sleep.” Eddie looks up into Richie’s eyes, then deflates, casting his gaze down to his crossed legs. “First night out of the hospital, I guess it’s… Fuck, I don’t know. I keep thinking about my wound opening up again, and I’d die, ‘cause there’s no one around who could help, and you… you’d find me. Dead. Yeah, I guess that’s one thing I’m scared of.”

“Shit, Eddie.”

“Also getting divorced,” Eddie adds, like it’s nothing.

Richie covers his face before Eddie can see him grinning, because _Jesus Christ._

Eddie had a gaping hole in his chest less than a month ago. The two of them killed a giant clown monster that fucked with their memories and killed too many people to count, and will probably have nightmares about it for the rest of their lives.

Eddie’s afraid of getting divorced.

And yeah, it makes sense, because not-normal scary things don’t make normal scary things any less scary. Richie knows that as well as anyone. And having to uproot your whole life at forty has to be pretty fucking scary.

Richie doesn’t have that much uprooting to do. He’s known he was gay since he was thirteen.

Eddie, on the other hand, is married. To a woman.

And Richie’s kind of dying to kiss him again, right now—to kiss away that frown on his mouth and the too-pensive look on his heavy brow. But he doesn’t. Because Eddie is married.

Really, Richie’s dying just to touch Eddie. To smack him around a little bit and mess up his hair (which is already pretty messed up from lying in bed, but Richie wants to make it worse)—nothing that would hurt, though. Nothing Eddie wouldn’t actually like.

Richie doesn’t do that, either. He isn’t thirteen anymore, but touching Eddie is still terrifying.

Instead, he changes the subject. “You wanna watch some TV?”

For a second, Eddie looks at Richie like Richie’s insane. And then he nods. “Yeah.”  


* * *

  
It’s hard to argue about what to watch when there’s nothing on in the middle of the night. They manage it, anyway, talking into the morning—and as the sun comes up over the horizon, filtering in through the cheap motel blinds, Eddie falls asleep in Richie’s bed to the soothing sounds of Family Feud.

He sleeps fine, though, next to Richie, and Richie doesn’t wake up again for the rest of the night. When Eddie blinks open groggy eyes to the encroaching afternoon sun, he almost panics about oversleeping, before he remembers that it doesn’t matter anymore. He doesn’t have anywhere to be.

Richie’s tangled in white sheets, bare arms and legs all over the place. His glasses are on the nightstand, his hair’s a mess, and Eddie notices for the first time that Richie’s balding. Between that and how _big_ he is—broad shoulders, long limbs, the twin motel bed barely big enough for him, let alone the both of them—it makes Eddie’s heart flutter to think that this is the Richie he remembers, and that he’s grown up. Eddie wonders what thirteen-year-old Richie would think of the man he is, now.

He wonders what thirteen-year-old _Eddie_ would think of the man _he_ is, now.

Richie’s radiating heat like no one’s business. Eddie tries to remember if he did that as a kid, too, but he can’t.

“Richie.” Eddie nudges Richie’s forearm. _Warm._ Richie just shifts in his sleep. “Richie, wake up.” He smacks Richie on the chest, and it works. “I’m hungry. Let’s get breakfast.”

“Fuck,” Richie groans. He rolls over to look Eddie squarely, albeit without his glasses, in the face. “What time is it?”

Eddie looks at the digital clock on the nightstand. “It’s, uh, two.”

“’S not breakfast.”

“It’s breakfast if it’s the first thing you eat.”

“It’s not even brunch.”

“You’re barely even awake. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“So what? I never know what I’m saying.”

“Whatever. I’m gonna shower.”

“Cool,” Richie mumbles, rolls over, and falls back to sleep.

Eddie takes his clothes with him into the bathroom. Even if he overpacked for Derry, he didn’t overpack for this. He has enough clothes to last him at least a week before doing laundry, plus his shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash. A whole bag of medications. Remnants of something obsessive he might not need anymore. He turns the shower up hot, because he couldn’t get it as hot as he wanted in the hospital, and it fogs up the bathroom.

In the shower, Eddie rubs soap over the pink scar on his sternum, and then he shaves over the one on his cheek, and he feels like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster. All scars, inside and out.

Eddie knows he shouldn’t be alive. But if it’s the same magic that killed Pennywise that saved him, too, then maybe that’s okay. Maybe he’s alive for a reason. Probably not, but maybe.

When he gets out of the bathroom, Richie’s fully awake, half-dressed in bed and scrolling through something on his phone. “Mike wants to know what we’re up to,” he announces, not looking up. “I told him I kidnapped you so I can sell your organs.”

“My organs have holes in them.” Eddie shoves his clothes from the day before into the side pocket of one of his suitcases. “No one wants my organs.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Richie says, winking. If they were still kids, Eddie might have smacked him.

Richie skips showering, and Eddie looks away when Richie pulls off his shirt to put on a clean one. He realizes, after, that Richie probably wouldn’t mind him looking.  


* * *

  
When Richie thinks about his career, which he tries not to do lately, he doesn’t doubt that he can pick up the pieces he left when he went back to Derry. A scandal might even be good for him. His agent hates him, sure, but that’s nothing new. He might even have enough of a fanbase that it doesn’t matter.

That’s what he tells Eddie, over breakfast. Or lunch. Or whatever. They get breakfast food either way, because Eddie wants it, and Richie doesn’t decide what to order until Eddie gets his eggs and coffee and Richie asks for that, too.

And when Richie comes out?

Well, maybe that will be good for him, too. Who the hell knows?

(He talks about coming out like it’s a given. He doesn’t tell Eddie that the thought of it chills him to his bones. Eddie knows, anyway.)

“I’ll probably get fired,” Eddie says, like it’s not really a problem. “I might have already gotten fired. I haven’t checked my work email in a while.”

“Fuck them anyway.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I can probably get another job doing the same thing, anyway. So I don’t really care. Can you believe that? That I don’t care?”

Eddie sounds like he _can’t_ believe it, but Richie can. Eddie only used to care about getting in trouble in school when his mom might have found out. Richie wonders what Eddie was like in high school. He wonders what Eddie was like in college. He wonders how long it took for Eddie to become the person he was when he showed up in Derry again.

“Hey—” Richie asks, when he’s halfway through the slice of cherry pie he got because it’s the kind of diner where you get that sort of thing. He lets Eddie sneak a few bites, because Eddie won’t get a slice for himself, and because he deserves it. “Do you have any old pictures? Of you, I mean. From after we moved away from Derry?”

“Uh, I think so?” Eddie’s eyes take a journey to the ceiling as he thinks about it. “I think I have some old yearbooks. They’re, um. At home.”

Richie doesn’t miss the way Eddie gets squirrely when he talks about home, so he makes a mental note of it. Richie has a lot of mental notes in his growing file on Eddie. It’s his way of making up for the years of forgetting. He catalogues every little thing about Eddie because he never wants Eddie out of his mind again.  


* * *

  
It’s another night and another motel, and Richie doesn’t do the Norman Bates thing again, but he thinks about it.

He thinks about that whole movie. _We’re all in our private traps._ Wasn’t that the line?

He thinks about Eddie.

Eddie was trapped. Now, he’s running wild like an uncaged animal. He clearly doesn’t know what he wants, which is fine, because Richie doesn’t either. They’re not even taking it a day at a time. It’s more like an hour at a time.

It’s fine. Eddie’s running away from everything but himself. Richie’s just along for the ride. It’s his latest philosophy: _fuck it._

“I’m sleeping with you,” Eddie announces, slamming the pillow from his bed onto Richie’s, where it lands with a soft _thump_ beside Richie’s head. “That okay?”

“Well, I normally make guys buy me dinner first,” Richie says, because he’s a dumbass. “But hey, you’re the boss.”

“Fuck you. That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. Sorry. Yeah, of course.” Richie scoots over, giving Eddie room. Eddie climbs under the covers, knocking hips with Richie. The heat of Eddie’s body through his boxers and t-shirt is almost all Richie can think about.

Eddie picked up a paperback at a rest stop earlier, and he buries his nose in it now, almost like he’s ignoring Richie on purpose. Or like if he insists on sleeping in Richie’s bed, he can pretend it doesn’t mean something if he doesn’t talk about it.

It’s fine. Richie doesn’t need to talk all the time.

Eddie falls asleep, first. He lays his head on Richie’s shoulder, testing, and when Richie doesn’t say anything, he relaxes against Richie’s body. Holding his breath, Richie wraps his arm around Eddie’s waist. It fits, there, in the space just below Eddie’s ribcage. It’s surprisingly calming. Richie can feel Eddie’s breathing against him, Eddie’s body shifting with every in and out of air.

In his sleep, Eddie’s hand goes to Richie’s chest, fingers curling against his sternum.

Richie _still_ feels guilty. He still feels guilty, even though Eddie’s the one cuddling up against him like his life depends on it. He feels guilty for enjoying it as much as he does, and then he feels guilty because that’s stupid, and Eddie doesn’t deserve that, and this is a _mutual_ thing.

Whatever this is, it’s _mutual._  


* * *

  
Richie wants to drive his own car, which is fine, because isn’t that bad a driver after all. He also lets Eddie pick the music. Between that, and the soft rumbling of the engine through Eddie’s veins, Eddie could probably fall asleep if the iced coffee in the cupholder didn’t have him feeling wired.

Eyes on the road, Richie gropes for his own iced coffee without looking. It takes him a few awkward tries to get the straw in his mouth. He asks casually, as he sets it back blindly into the cupholder, “So did you talk to Myra yet?”

(Richie wasn’t going to bring it up, but the ethical quandary of sleeping with a married man, albeit literally, is getting to him. There’s also the nagging desire to kiss Eddie again. Okay, Richie’s selfish. It hurts less in the daytime. He’d feel worse about it if he wasn’t pretty sure that Eddie wants it, too.)

Eddie takes a sip of his iced coffee, rolling the undissolved sugar around in his mouth. “No.” Even with the sugar, it tastes bitter.

“Are you going to?”

“I probably have to,” Eddie says, and it definitely doesn’t answer Richie’s question.  


* * *

  
Eddie checks in at the next motel. He gets a single without asking Richie, which is _definitely_ not a problem.

The bed’s big enough that they can actually have some space. Eddie’s lying on his stomach, arm draped on top of Richie with his hand resting on Richie’s abdomen, and he’s _talking._ A lot. “You know I used to think there was something wrong with me? Like that I was sick, for being gay? So I just, kind of, repressed it? I guess?”

Richie picks up Eddie’s fingers one at a time, letting them drop back against his stomach. He loses interest eventually and just interlaces them with his own. Knowing Eddie, that doesn’t surprise him. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever feel like that?”

“Not really. I was just terrified that people would find out. I think people knew, though.”

“We never knew.”

“Bowers’ gang did.”

“They said that shit about all of us.”

“Well, they were right about you, too.”

“They weren’t right about shit.” Eddie’s quiet for a moment, and then he keeps going. “You know, I think my mom didn’t know what to do when I got older. Like, she couldn’t decide if she wanted me to get a girlfriend, to prove I wasn’t gay, or if she wanted me to stay at home with her forever.” Eddie takes his hand back and rolls languidly over, staring at the ceiling. “I guess I kind of ended up doing both? Fuck, I need to get a divorce.”

“She hasn’t tried to call you?” Richie asks, meaning Myra.

“I, uh, blocked her number.”

“Jesus.”

“Shut up.”

“You’ve really gotta start looking your problems in the face, my dear Eds.”

“Don’t call me that… like _that._ Christ. When’s the last time you looked _your_ problems in the face?”

Richie shrugs, which is kind of awkward, lying down. “I kind of am, right now.”

Eddie shoots upright. “What?”

“Oh, holy shit. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Eddie has that look in his eyes like he’s two seconds away from tearing someone’s throat out, combined with that sadness he seems to embody so well. “Dude. If you don’t want me around, you could have just said so. I thought you _wanted_ this.”

“I do!”

Richie’s loud mouth doesn’t usually get him _out_ of problems, but maybe it will help this time—and there’s probably not any real risk in saying it, not now, so _fuck it._ Richie says it.

“I love you.”

Eddie’s brain stops working.

It isn’t like Eddie didn’t _sort of_ already know that, but hearing it aloud is different. He feels kind of like he did when Bowers stabbed him in the face—all the shock with _almost_ none of the pain. Then, he was strategic. Now, he’s just dumbstruck. “Oh!” he squeaks. Nervous laughter bubbles up out of his mouth. “Ha! Okay!”

“Um.”

“I’m gonna get a divorce,” Eddie says with some finality, and _okay._ Richie gets it.

“That’s good, buddy,” he sighs. “That’s really good.”  


* * *

  
Eddie wakes up before Richie, the next morning. Struck with nervous energy, he goes out to get breakfast, walking the fifteen minutes to the nearest gas station Dunkin’ Donuts and back. He comes back with two iced coffees—cream and sugar—and bagels, which he and Richie eat in bed, not caring how many crumbs they get in the sheets (it’s a lot). Eddie’s anxiety is acting up, and the caffeine doesn’t help, but eating breakfast with Richie kind of does. “I think I’m gonna call Myra,” he says, through the bite of bagel in his mouth, because he feels like he’ll explode if he doesn’t say it. He feels like he’ll explode if he doesn’t do it. He kind of feels like he’ll explode, anyway.

“Oh!” Richie says. His eyes are wide and knowing behind his glasses. “Okay. Cool. Like now?”

“Maybe?”

“You want to be alone? I can leave if you need me to.”

“No, I think I’ll go outside.” Eddie looks down at his half-finished bagel. By now, it’s lost most of its appeal. He takes a sip of his coffee, which he doesn’t really want either, and decides, “Okay. Yeah. I’m gonna do it now.”

Richie’s hand goes to Eddie’s shoulder. “Hey, you remember what I said in the sewers?”

“No?”

“You’re braver than you think.”

Eddie does remember that. He remembers the worst day of his life, and he remembers Richie getting him through it.

And if he got through that, he can get through this.

Eddie gets up from the bed. Richie’s hand falls from his shoulder, and he misses it, but he can’t do this with Richie around. He slips on his shoes and jacket, takes his phone and room key, and heads out into the cold. The door shuts behind him with a click.

The crisp fall air burns Eddie’s lungs, but it’s refreshing, too. His hands shake. He opens his recent calls—(he hasn’t really called _anyone_ lately)—and presses the name: _Myra Kaspbrak._  


* * *

  
In the chilly autumn afternoon, staring out over the parking lot into the trees across the road, Eddie’s sitting alone when Richie comes outside to check on him. The bench Eddie’s perched on is just below the window of their room, rickety decaying wood, and it creaks when Richie sits down on it. Eddie looks up at him, eyes round and frightened like he’s just seen…

Well, Pennywise.

“Hey, man,” Richie says, gentle, like he’s trying not to scare away a startled animal. “You done?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He looks down at his phone, clutched tight in both hands, and sighs.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, again, but the squeak in his voice makes it clear that he isn’t.

Richie takes one of Eddie’s trembling hands, and Eddie gives it over, squeezing Richie like a vise.

“Okay. Okay. Ow.”

“Sorry.” Eddie loosens his grip. His hand is clammy in Richie’s.

“Hey, that’s okay. You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Well, I told her I want a divorce.”

“Good. I knew you could do it.”

“She sort of, um, blew up on me for going no-contact for a month. Which. That’s fair. I guess.” The more Eddie talks about it, the more he opens up. “She wants me to go back to New York. I think she wants to try to reconcile. Or she just wants me to come get my things. It’s, uh, not really clear.”

“Do you want to go back to New York?”

“Maybe?” Eddie’s face twists up in thought. “Yeah. I think so. I could get my things. Talk to my lawyer. Get it over with.”

“You have a lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, like that’s normal.

“You want me to come?”

“Of course I do.” Sad as he looks, there’s a hint of a smile on Eddie’s face. Richie can’t help but echo it. “Dumbass.”

With the meandering, unplanned path they’ve made southwest, Richie figures they’re about two days from New York. Eddie wants to go right away, and Richie’s fine with that, so they pack up the car that afternoon with their luggage and the remains of Eddie’s uneaten breakfast.

Eddie closes the trunk on his suitcases and makes his way to the front of the car, around the driver’s side. “Can I drive?” he asks. Richie quirks an eyebrow. “Nerves.”

Richie considers it. He wouldn’t be surprised if Eddie was a miles safer driver than him. He also wouldn’t be surprised if Eddie had road rage like Richie’s never seen before, even when he lived in Boston. But it’s the highway, so what’s the worst that can happen? “Sure.” He shrugs and tosses Eddie the keys.

It’s been a while since Richie’s ridden shotgun in his own car. He’s grateful for the extra leg room, the opportunity to look at Eddie whenever he wants, and his own self-prescribed rule of _shotgun picks the music._ Richie gets directions on his phone, now that they have a destination, and it interrupts Spotify every once in a while to tell Eddie where to go.

It’s a few hours before the sun starts to set, around half past five. As it goes down behind the trees, Eddie asks without taking his eyes off the road, like he’s been thinking about it, “Do you have cigarettes?”

“Uh, I think so,” Richie says. “Why?”

“I want one?”

“Dude. _You_ want a _cigarette?”_

Eddie bristles, and it’s cute, the way he gets defensive. His brow furrows over glowering eyes. “What’s so fucking unbelievable about that?”

“You had fake asthma your whole life and you’re probably petrified of getting lung cancer?”

“Shut up. It’s supposed to calm you down, right? I want to try it.”

Richie shrugs. “Whatever, man. I can’t promise you’ll like it, though. Let me check in my bag.”

At the sound of Richie’s seatbelt unclicking, Eddie pulls the car over. Around them, leafless trees spread out under an orange-pink sky. There’s a town up ahead, but no one around, save for an occasional passing car.

Richie stretches into the backseat for his duffel bag and rummages through the side pockets until he finds his barely-used carton of cigarettes and lighter.

“Okay,” Richie says, falling back down into his seat. “You know how to do it and everything?”

“I’ve seen people do it.”

“Yeah, it’s not that hard.”

Eddie rolls down the front windows, inviting in the breeze. It isn’t too cold, but it makes Richie’s skin prickle, still. After a few unsuccessful flicks of his lighter, he manages to light the cigarette for Eddie.

Eddie takes it between his fingers, hand cupped around the unlit end, and raises it to his mouth. Richie watches his face, stern in concentration as he takes a pull.

Eddie chokes. “God, that’s fucking gross.”

Richie can’t help but grin. “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Hey,” Richie says. “You wanna try something else? Give me that.”

Eddie hands the cigarette over. Richie takes it in his left hand, and takes Eddie’s face in his right. It fits perfectly there, thumb over the scar on Eddie’s cheek, fingers curling over the angle of his jaw.

Richie takes a pull from the cigarette, then drapes his left arm over the seat and away, before leaning in to breathe smoke over Eddie’s open mouth. Eddie tries to take it in, and chokes again. His eyes stay on Richie, though, rapt and bright. Waiting.

Richie licks his lips. The hand he has on Eddie’s face slides around to the back of Eddie’s neck, playing against the soft, yielding skin. Richie’s been cooped up in the car all day. He hasn’t even been driving. So is it really his fault if he wants to do something impulsive?

Richie leans forward. His lips brush Eddie’s. He still has the taste of cigarettes in his mouth, but kissing Eddie makes it sweet.

And then Richie pulls back, sputtering, “Sorry.”

“Shut up.” Eddie puts his hand to the back of Richie’s neck, pulls him back in, and crashes into him.

Eddie kisses away the cigarette taste. He kisses Richie like they’re in private. Richie stubs out the cigarette and tosses it somewhere on the floor of the car, so he can run both hands over Eddie’s shoulders, searching for the warmth of his body beneath his clothes.

“Rich?” Eddie breathes, forehead against Richie’s, hands tangled in Richie’s shirt.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Are we really doing this?”

“Mm. Looks like it.” When Richie licks his lips, he can practically taste Eddie on them.

Eddie blinks. He shoots forward, again, searching for Richie’s lips with his own. Richie’s hands go to the back of Eddie’s head, tugging on the short hair there. Richie’s dying to get more comfortable, but the back seat is way too small. It’s the first time in his life Richie regrets getting a Mustang. The only thing he can think of is—“You wanna tilt your seat back?”

Eddie scrambles for the lever, finds it, and falls backward. Richie does it, too. Roughly horizontal, Richie grabs for Eddie again. He pulls Eddie as close as he can get in the cramped, awkward space. With Eddie’s hands all over him, the warmth of Eddie’s body, the way Eddie kisses and breaks off to breathe, Richie can’t think. His mind swims with Eddie, and so does his body. _Eddie, Eddie, Eddie._

Richie takes Eddie’s face in his hand, feeling Eddie’s jaw move with the kiss. He tongues at the inside of Eddie’s cheek scar, because it feels weird, and because he wants to feel every inch of Eddie in every way he can. He puts his hand to Eddie’s chest, clutching tight at Eddie’s t-shirt, and suddenly he wants to see the scar there up close.

“Eds?” Richie breathes. He knows he might be asking too much. “You wanna take your shirt off?”

“You want me to?”

“You don’t have to. But yeah, I do. Only if you want to.”

“Are you sure? I mean, my scar, you know, it’s…”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“It’s big,” Eddie finishes, but under the gentle urging of Richie’s eyes, he relents. Richie watches Eddie wrestle out of his shirt and toss it to the floor, watches him lie back down and stretch out his body, and takes in everything. “I know it’s kind of ugly.”

“Eddie, dude.” Richie’s staring. He can’t help it. “Even with the scar, you’re still easily the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’m probably harder than I’ve ever been in my life, right now, so.”

“Okay. Okay, cool. Me too,” Eddie confesses.

“I mean, the scar’s kinda hot, too. To be honest. Like, what’s sexier than surviving being impaled by a giant fucked-up clown monster?”

“Really? I let you get this far and you’re still trying to ruin it by saying stupid shit?”

“I mean it, though. You’re really hot. Everything about you. You know that, right? You’ve gotta know that, or it’s not fair.”

Eddie lets out a noise, half groan and half whimper. Richie shifts in his seat, leaning over Eddie at a right angle, and turns to Eddie’s scar. Pink and cratered in the center of his abdomen, it spreads out like a starburst. Or a flower. Something blossoming. Richie bends his head down, slow in case Eddie wants to stop him, and presses a kiss to its center. Eddie’s fingers come up to card through Richie’s hair. “I can’t feel it,” Eddie chokes. “You know that, right?”

“Just wanna kiss you,” Richie mumbles, mouth moving past the edge of the scar to meet pale, unbroken skin, and Eddie _can_ feel that. He whines under Richie’s lips, stomach stuttering with his ragged breaths, and Richie just wants to make him feel good.

Richie trails kisses down the downy skin of Eddie’s stomach. With his mouth and nose buried in the soft pudge there, and with tentative hands, Richie unbuttons Eddie’s jeans and tugs them down as far as they’ll go. “I don’t have condoms,” he says, “but I haven’t slept with anyone in, like, a _really_ long time, and I get check-ups, so…”

“Oh, holy shit, Richie,” Eddie breathes, like his brain’s only just catching up to what’s happening. “Are you gonna suck my dick?”

“I would, uh, really fucking like to. Would _you_ like me to do that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, please. Holy shit.” Richie dips fingers beneath the waistband of Eddie’s boxers. Eddie trembles. “Fuck. Condoms. Okay. You’re sure you haven’t been with anyone since you got tested?”

“A hundred percent. People aren’t exactly lining up. Except you, I guess.”

“Okay. Right. If you don’t care, I don’t care.”

“I _really_ don’t care.” It’s not exactly what Richie meant, but Eddie seems to get the point. He lifts his hips enough for Richie to tug his jeans and boxers down, and Richie shows him something he’ll never—pretty much ever—forget.  


* * *

  
Eddie wakes to dawn outside. He’s in the front seat of Richie’s car, his neck stiff and painful. Richie’s half on top of him, draped over the two front seats— _so fucking heavy_ —and Eddie manages to push Richie off enough to tilt the seat back up. He turns the car on, and when he rolls down the window, there’s moisture in the cool air, like it rained during the night. The empty road shines in the dim morning.

As the engine rumbles to life, Richie stirs. “Hey, Eds?” he groans. “Why the _fuck_ did we sleep in the car?”

“You better fucking remember what happened last night. Or I swear to God.”

Richie yawns. “I could never forget _you,_ baby.” The way Richie says _you,_ Eddie feels a little objectified. He doesn’t really mind it. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to mess around in a car. You know you’re basically my teenage dream?”

Eddie ignores that. “I need to shower,” he says. “Like, right away.”

“Yeah, okay.” Richie tilts his own seat back up. “Let’s find somewhere to do that.”

There isn’t a motel in the town up ahead, but fifteen minutes down the road, Richie points out a truck stop. “Those things usually have showers.”

“How do you know that?” Eddie asks as he pulls into the parking lot.

“This isn’t my first rodeo?”

It’s empty, this early in the morning. Eddie takes one of the dozens of parking spots. The sun’s fully out now, bright and high.

Eddie turns the car off and rolls his head back, cracking his neck. “God. I feel gross.”

“Oh,” Richie says, quiet. “Like, physically? Or emotionally?

 _Oh._ “God. Sorry. Physically.”

“Good.” Richie perks up. “Because, considering I took your virginity, it’s very important to me that you feel good about the experience.”

“You didn’t take my virginity.”

“You had sex with a woman. That doesn’t count if you’re gay.” Richie looks Eddie over. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. You ever been with a man, Eds?”

Eddie sighs. “You’re the first.”

Richie just grins, smug and obnoxious, and cracks the passenger side door. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you showered.”

Inside, there’s a food court, tourist shops, and an area for the bathrooms and showers. They buy time and towels from a machine and head to the shower area, where cubicles with real, locking doors line the tiled hallway.

Eddie takes his clothes and soap inside with him and sets his clothes on a small table in the corner, so they don’t get wet. He looks the shower over, and it looks fine. Clean. Clean enough. He hears the shower next to him come to life, and turns his all the way up. The cold water hits him all at once, leaving him gasping. It heats up, but barely gets warm enough not to chill, and Eddie still finds himself shivering.

Okay. Lukewarm shower. Eddie can deal with that. It’s fine, as long as he can get clean. Eddie squirts some soap into his hands and gets to work. The more time he spends in that shower cubicle, though, the more he _notices things._ Like the discolored tiles near the floor, white turning just slightly yellow. The grime in the shower head, when Eddie examines it from just the right angle. And besides, you never know what kind of bacteria could be hiding, even when you can’t see it, especially in public bathrooms. And his mother always used to warn him—

_Don’t shower with the other boys, Eddie._

_Never, ever use a public shower, Eddie._

_You should know how unsanitary those things can get._

_Oh, Christ._

“Richie?”

“Yeah?” Richie calls out. “What’s up?”

Eddie’s voice wavers. “Richie, I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

Eddie cracks open the door, looking for Richie. “This place is so fucking unsanitary.” Eddie’s throat feels tight. It aches for his inhaler for the first time since Derry. “There’s probably bacteria, like, all over the place. I’m gonna get sick. I can’t do this.”

Richie opens his own door and peeks his head around. His eyes land on Eddie’s face, squinting without his glasses, and he says, “Oh, shit.” Then, he disappears.

The water in Richie’s shower trickles to a stop, and in a second, Richie’s outside Eddie’s door.

“Hey, can I come in?”

“Okay,” Eddie breathes, with difficulty. “Okay.”

He steps back, and Richie joins him under the lukewarm spray, taking Eddie into his arms. Shaking, Eddie lets it happen. “Okay,” Richie says. “Breathe.”

Eddie’s bare chest heaves with his labored breaths. Richie’s still and steady.

“Here’s what I think,” Richie says. “I think you’re not really freaked out about how dirty this place is. I think you’re freaked out about Myra. Does that sound right?”

Eddie nods. It does, when he thinks about it. “Yeah,” he chokes.

“Okay,” Richie says, patient. “Okay. So tell me. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Eddie starts to think about it.

_“Realistically.”_

The only thing Eddie can think of is—the only thing he’s _really_ scared of, the only thing he doesn’t think he can handle—“I don’t get a divorce.”

Richie nods. “Okay,” he says. “Why not?”

“She… makes me stay.”

“Okay. Well, we’re not gonna let that happen. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie’s breathing steadies. He doesn’t feel two seconds away from a heart attack, anymore. Richie’s arms are wrapped around him, and he’s eye level with Richie’s chest—Richie’s _naked_ chest, and that’s okay, too. There’s nothing in front of Eddie that he hasn’t seen before. He thinks, again, of his mother telling him not to shower with the other boys. He shuts it down.

“You’re okay, man,” Richie says.

“I’m scared to go back, Rich.”

“We don’t have to.”

“No, I want to. I just…”

“Okay,” Richie says. He takes Eddie by the shoulders, gentle. “Then here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna go to New York, with me, and you’re gonna ask your soon-to-be-ex-wife for a divorce in person, and you’re gonna do _so_ fucking good, Eds, you know? And you wanna know why?”

“Why?”

There’s a smile on Richie’s face like he knows something Eddie doesn’t. “Because you’re braver than you think.”

Eddie scoffs a laugh, because he feels like the alternative is to start crying. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it’s true? You’re the bravest guy I know.”

“Richie, come on.”

“Seriously. You’re coming out of the closet at, like, forty, and finally living the life you’re supposed to, and that’s fucking brave as hell, man.”

“Well, so are you.”

“Nah. I’m a coward. I’m so fucking scared, man, it’s insane.” Richie laughs a nervous laugh, and Eddie gets the feeling he’s been keeping those words bottled up.

Slowly, Eddie wraps his arms around Richie’s waist. He presses his face into Richie’s chest, breathing in the scent of soap and water and skin.

And it’s good. Because it’s Richie.

“We’re gonna be okay, though,” Richie rambles on. “You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna go to New York and kick Myra’s ass.”

“Um.”

“Metaphorically. I don’t condone violence.” Richie pauses, thinking about it. “Usually.”

Eddie looks up into Richie’s eyes. “I’ve seen you violent.”

“You don’t know the half of it. You were unconscious,” Richie says, with no small amount of pride, “when I ripped off Pennywise’s claw and stabbed him with it, but I did that.”

“Its… claw?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. His face falls. “Yeah, the one that…”

The one that went through Eddie. Richie doesn’t have to say it for Eddie to know.

It’s not like Eddie doesn’t know what Richie would do for him, already, but there’s something about that—about Richie taking the thing that hurt Eddie and using it to take out all his anger and his grief and to _kill…_

“Holy shit, Richie.”

“Yeah.”

And then, Richie shrugs. He smiles, and something changes. That’s something Richie can do, lighten the mood with his body. Eddie didn’t get it in Derry, but he gets it now.

“Okay, Eds, are you good? ‘Cause I’ll finish showering in front of you if you want, but I feel like you don’t need to see me wash my dick.”

“I don’t need to see that,” Eddie agrees. “I’m good. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Richie says. It’s kind of a joke. He pats Eddie on the shoulder, bare skin on bare skin. It never stops being electrifying.

Richie slips back into the other shower. Eddie isn’t thinking about cleanliness or Myra or Sonia as he finishes up. He dries off with his towel and pulls on a t-shirt and jeans over damp skin, and when he meets Richie again, Richie’s glowing. His beard is dark, after not having shaved for at least a day (Eddie hasn’t either, and he rubs a hand over his rough cheek with disapproval), but he’s bright and clean, otherwise, wet hair curling at the ends where it’s starting to dry. “You hungry?”

The only thing open in the food court is a Shake Shack. Richie gets a cheeseburger and fries, with a black and white milkshake: vanilla and chocolate. Eddie gets chicken tenders with honey mustard—and at Richie’s insistence, because Richie doesn’t want to be the only one getting a shake, a strawberry one.

It’s a good choice.

They stop by the gas station on the way out, and when Richie gets out to pump the gas, Eddie gets out, too. He leans over the car, elbows on the roof. Watching Richie pump gas, there’s something kind of sexy about it, that Eddie doesn’t fully understand. It’s like recognizing his attraction to men makes him see things differently. It makes him _feel_ different. Between that and the jarring revelation of Richie as a sexual being, Eddie _does_ kind of feel like he was a virgin before last night—not that he would admit that to Richie.

“So what’s the plan?” Richie asks. Focusing on the gas, the talking is an afterthought. “When we get to New York?”

It isn’t something Eddie’s thought about in detail. The looming fear was enough to keep the details mostly off his mind. But if Eddie’s anything, it’s practical. He hopes so, anyway, as a former risk analyst. “What day is it?”

“No idea, buddy.”

Eddie checks his phone. It’s Friday.

“It’s Friday,” he says. “So Myra’ll probably be home tomorrow.”

She’ll probably be home on a Friday night, too, but it’ll be late. The morning would be better.

He’ll have slept.

(He’ll have spent the night with Richie.)

So he decides. Morning it is.

“So we can stay the night,” Eddie says. “In New York. And I’ll go talk to her tomorrow morning.”

“Works for me.”

After Richie pays for the gas and they’re back in the car, Richie pushes his seat all the way back, stretching his legs. He eats his cheeseburger like a goddamn animal, ravenous and done before Eddie can blink.

Eddie eats his chicken tenders and watches Richie wrap pink lips around the straw of his milkshake. He’s noticing things about Richie now, about his body, and it’s a little distracting.

“You’re looking at me,” Richie says, matter-of-fact.

 _Should Eddie say it?_ He says it. “I think you’re hot.”

“Heh.” Richie takes another sip of his milkshake, hiding a smile. “Cool.”

Before long, they’re on the road again. Eddie finds himself wishing they could just drive forever, with New York always in the distance and never getting closer. But, Eddie guesses, everything has to happen sometime.

“Do you think this is creepy?” Richie asks. The Lincoln Tunnel opens up in front of them.

Dim lights ricochet off tiled walls. They’re painfully underwater.

“You think it’s creepy?”

“Yeah, man. What if it gets a crack in it and water starts coming in? What if it collapses? We’d drown.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah. I absolutely think that.”

It doesn’t collapse. When they come out the other side, they’re in New York City. Skyscrapers loom over bustling streets, and Richie takes a hand off the steering wheel to squeeze Eddie’s.

Eddie’s home.  


* * *

  
It’s Richie’s idea to get a nice hotel, this time. It’s uptown, and it’s the kind that has a kitchen in the room. They leave the car in a parking garage, and Richie helps Eddie take his two suitcases up the elevator to their fifteenth floor room. Richie claims his throne on the queen bed, nose-diving into it the second he drops his duffel bag, and leaving Eddie to do whatever unpacking he wants to do in peace.

Eddie disappears into the bathroom with his toiletries bag. He emerges after a few minutes, coming around to stand in front of the bed. “I want to cook.”

“Oh,” Richie mumbles into the pillow. “Sweet.”

“I saw a Target,” Eddie continues, like he’s been formulating this whole plan all along without telling Richie. “We could get groceries.”

“Ugh, okay.” Richie peels himself regretfully off of the bed. “I’m always down for Target.”

It’s six PM. It’s fully dark outside. They walk to Target.

New York is different—from everywhere they’ve been so far, from Derry, from Chicago, even. Richie’s been here before, sure, but he’s never taken the time to walk down the street to go grocery shopping. He’s never been here _with_ anyone, and with Eddie walking beside him, the cold gray city feels cozy and vibrant.

The Target here is mostly underground, with the checkouts on the first floor and escalators leading down into the basement. Eddie goes straight to the produce section, leaving Richie to his own devices, so Richie grabs a basket.

He gets deodorant, because he’s been using Eddie’s, and it’s kind of weird. He gets a notebook and pens, because he’s been meaning to start writing his own material. If he can get his career back on track, anyway. He could probably write a lot about his life, right now.

He passes by Eddie, still mulling around in the produce section. As he walks by, he takes Eddie’s hand and squeezes it, just for a second, before continuing on his way. And then he just wanders around, throwing stuff into his basket. Candy. Wine. ChapStick, because if he’s going to be spending time kissing Eddie, he’ll probably need it. Some lube, just in case. Scented candles, because why the hell not.

Every time he walks by Eddie, Richie touches him. He makes a game out of it, seeing what he can get away with, without anyone noticing. He takes Eddie’s hand again, squeezes it a little longer, hidden behind a crate of avocados. He presses a sneaky kiss to the side of Eddie’s head behind the aisles. He doesn’t try to kiss Eddie’s lips, though. Not here.

Richie knows it’s New York and not Derry, but there are some fears it’s hard to shake.  


* * *

  
Eddie ends up with gold potatoes, broccoli, a box of pasta, meat sauce, and a few cans of spices. He lays everything out on the kitchen counter and comes up with a plan. It’s all improv, but he’s pretty sure it’ll make for a good dinner.

He digs a pot out of the cabinets, rinsing it out for good measure before putting water on the stove to boil. He takes his time washing the vegetables, until they’re satisfactorily clean, then finds a cutting board to dice the potatoes and chop up the broccoli into florets. While he’s doing it, Eddie hears the rustle of plastic bags, and Richie moving around behind him. He looks over his shoulder, and Richie’s setting up candles—on the dresser, the nightstand, and one right by Eddie on the kitchen island. “You’re probably not allowed to have those in here.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Probably.”

He goes around with his lighter, setting them aflame one by one, and Eddie goes back to his cooking. The candles smell like burnt vanilla, like baking. Eddie can only smell them from certain spots, but when he does, the scent drifts over him, warm and sweet.

After he’s done with the candles, Richie joins Eddie in the kitchen, with a bottle of red wine Eddie guesses he also got at Target. He pours two glasses, leaves one with Eddie, and takes the other back to the bed. Nursing his glass, Eddie cooks the vegetables in sauce on the stove, and the scent of it swirls with the vanilla in the air. He boils the pasta, combining everything together at the end and spicing it to taste.

Sometime while Eddie was cooking, Richie stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers. He’s in bed, on top of the covers, long legs stretched out in front of him. Portioning the pasta into two bowls, Eddie thinks about asking Richie to come to the kitchen. Instead, he brings the bowls to the bed.

“Oh, hell yeah,” Richie says, accepting his bowl. He sits up, cracking his neck. As Richie folds his legs in front of him, his boxers ride up around his thighs, and Eddie stares.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” When Eddie pokes his fork through a potato cube and pops it in his mouth, it practically melts, soft and spicy and a little too hot.

It’s good. Richie seems to think so too, devouring it with enthusiasm.

Eddie watches him eat, feeling kind of guilty about it. There’s pride, sure, that Richie likes something Eddie made, and it makes something flutter in his stomach. But there’s also the way Eddie can’t seem to stop looking at Richie regardless.

Eddie watches Richie’s arms move, his thick biceps, his strong forearms with their dark hair, his knobby wrist bones. Richie’s fingers are long and broad. The way they curl around his fork is distracting. His bare legs are distracting, too. So is the way his stubbled jaw moves, when he eats.

And the red wine stains on his pink lips. The flutter of his eyelashes, behind his glasses, when he looks between Eddie and his pasta.

Eddie never knew what desire was supposed to feel like. It feels addicting.

When they finish eating, Richie takes the bowls and sets them on the nightstand. As he turns back, Eddie meets his eyes, curious and severe. “Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah, bud?”

Eddie descends on him. He climbs into Richie’s lap, hands on Richie’s shoulders, and tastes the leftover spice in Richie’s mouth. Richie’s scented candles keep on burning but Eddie smells him, instead, heady and intoxicating. Caught off guard, Richie adapts, taking handfuls of Eddie and pulling him in.

Eddie’s hand tightens, pulling at Richie’s shirt, and Richie pulls back.

“Oh,” Richie breathes, blue eyes wide behind skewed glasses. “Whoa. Okay.”

“Is this okay?”

“Fuck yeah, man, it’s okay.” Richie nips at Eddie’s lips, and when Eddie pulls him down into the mattress, wriggling out of his own jeans in the process, Richie goes with easy agreement.

Kissing him still, Eddie puts a hand to Richie’s chest, feels the muscle move as Richie’s arm wraps around him. Richie’s so _big,_ and Eddie feels like he could disappear in Richie’s shoulders. He wants to. He wants all of Richie, _right fucking now._

Richie pulls Eddie flush against his body. He slides a sturdy thigh between Eddie’s legs, solid and hot. All of him is so, _so_ hot, like he could burn Eddie’s skin just by touching it.

With smooth friction against Eddie’s bare legs, Richie’s thigh nudges up against Eddie’s dick. A tremor goes through Eddie’s whole body. “Oh, fuck, Richie.”

“Yeah?” Richie squeaks, sounding breathless. He nudges his thigh up a little further, mouth slack with something like awe. Eddie just groans, wordless and soft.

Richie rolls them over, pinning Eddie into the bed. One of his arms comes up near Eddie’s head, bearing down into the mattress to support Richie’s weight as Richie kisses him deep and hungry. The other grabs Eddie’s thigh, rough and desperate, and Eddie has never wanted something so bad in his life.

“I bought lube,” Richie says, against Eddie’s mouth, and his voice squeaks. “At Target.”

“Richie. Go fucking get it.”  


* * *

  
Richie wakes up to Eddie rolling into him, half-asleep himself, searching for that warmth Richie’s happy to give. The sun comes in through the open blinds, landing directly on Richie’s squinting eyes. He rolls to his side, running his fingers through Eddie’s hair and cradling his head close. “Richie,” Eddie mumbles, still very much not conscious.

“Hey, man,” Richie says. “How you feeling?”

“Feel good.”

“Yeah? You feel good about talking to Myra today?”

Eddie sits up, blinking wearily. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah. You wanna go get breakfast first?”

Eddie yawns. “Yeah. If we’re going back to my old apartment anyway, there’s a café I like across the street. I could show you.”

“Oh,” Richie whispers. “You want me to come?”

“I mean. I don’t want her to meet you. Uh. Ever, probably. But if you could come with me? And do something else while I go inside?”

“Yeah.” Richie’ll do that. He’d probably do anything Eddie asked him, but Eddie doesn’t need to know that. “Of course, man.”

Eddie sighs, deep and painful. Richie can see his nervousness—can see everything—in Eddie’s eyes.

“Hey.” Richie puts his hand to the space between Eddie’s neck and shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine. Tell me why it’s gonna be fine.”

Eddie’s brows knit. “’Cause I’m braver than I think?”

“Fuck yeah, you are. Can I kiss you?”

“Oh,” Eddie whispers. “Yeah.”

Richie leans forward. He kisses Eddie’s lips, then his forehead, making Eddie wrinkle his nose. Then, he fights out of the sheets tangled around his legs and gets out of bed. “Okay!” he announces. “Who’s ready for an exciting day of _getting divorced?”_ Eddie throws a pillow at him.

Eddie knows the Subway system better than Richie does—which is to say, not at all—so Richie lets Eddie lead him to the nearest Subway station, which turns out to be a block away from the Target, and onto the Q train going downtown.

The morning Subway is packed. It isn’t overflowing, but there are more people than Eddie and Richie have been around yet, together. Richie knows they probably aren’t looking at the two of them—knows, logically, because no one really cares about strangers on the Subway—but he still can’t shake the feeling of being watched. He feels eyes on him, or imagines them anyway, and feels like they see him with Eddie, and they know.

Richie’s heart is beating fast. Where Richie’s hand rests on his knee, Eddie grazes fingertips over Richie’s knuckles. He looks up into Richie’s eyes. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Richie forces a smile. “Peachy.”

Eddie gives Richie a look that says he doesn’t believe him. But whatever. Eddie’s the one with problems, right now. He can worry about Richie’s later.

They have to transfer trains, just once, and Richie sticks by Eddie’s side. He feels like he could lose Eddie in the crowds.

The café Eddie takes Richie to is small. It’s quiet. The menu’s written in chalk. After ordering, they take a table by the window. The building across the street is black marble, stretching higher than Richie can see from here. Eddie looks out, ducking down and angling his head just right until he finds what he’s looking for. “That’s our window,” he says, pointing. “Tenth floor, fourth from the left.”

Richie doesn’t count to see which one Eddie’s talking about. They all look exactly the same. He nods and listens anyway.

In a few minutes, a server comes around to drop off their food. Eddie has avocado toast with over-easy eggs on it and a fancy coffee in front of him, and he eats the avocado toast with a fork and knife. Richie’s kind of lovestruck about it.

“Hey,” Richie says. He’s halfway through his breakfast sandwich; he puts it down to focus on Eddie. “You good?”

“Trying not to think about it.” Eddie closes his eyes and breathes deep.

Richie thinks about holding his hand, decides against it, and then changes his mind. Because someone could see, but Eddie is hurting, and Richie loves him—so Richie reaches across the table and takes Eddie’s hand.

If anyone sees, they don’t say anything. So Richie squeezes.

Eddie squeezes back. His rigid shoulders soften. He squeezes Richie’s hand hard, and Richie lets him.

After a minute, Eddie takes his hand back, but only so he can finish eating. His eyes stay mostly on Richie, though, and it feels almost the same. When Eddie finishes his coffee, he slams his empty mug down onto the table and says, “Okay. I’m gonna do it.”

Richie stands, because Eddie’s standing, and he’s nervous, because Eddie is. Eddie reaches out. His hand grazes Richie’s arm. “Hey,” Eddie says. “You know I love you, right?”

Richie could cry. “Yeah, man. Of course I know that.”

“Okay. Good.”

Eddie starts to turn away, then changes his mind, pulling Richie into a hug without warning. It takes Richie’s breath away. He’s afraid, for a second, but all of that melts away when he wraps his arms around Eddie, too. “You’re gonna do great, man.”

“Thanks, Richie.” Eddie lets go. “I’ll see you after?”

“Yeah. I’m not going anywhere.”

After one last look at Richie, like he’s memorizing Richie’s face, Eddie turns and goes. “I’m braver than I think,” he says to himself. “I’m braver than I think.”

The ghost of a smile fades from Richie’s mouth as he sits back down. The pressure’s gone. Eddie can handle this on his own (and Richie wasn’t lying when he said Eddie would do great—he believes it as much as he can believe in _anything)._ All Richie has to do is wait.

He looks out the window and thinks of Eddie walking these streets every day. He thinks of Eddie sitting here in the café without him, enjoying his avocado toast and coffee in what must have been rare moments of peace. Eddie was probably never really happy. Hell, Richie wasn’t either, but he didn’t have it nearly as bad.

He takes the notebook and pens he got at Target out of his backpack. He orders another latte, and he drinks it slowly as he scribbles down his thoughts. It feels good to get them out. To see them, real and concrete on paper, and think about what he can keep and what he can let go.

He writes about Pennywise. He writes about his nightmares. He writes about Eddie, and when he imagines talking about Eddie on stage, it's only about half as scary as he expected.

Which is still pretty scary.

Richie wants to do it anyway, though, because he's damn proud of Eddie.

Because Eddie's fucking awesome.

It’s an hour and a half later when Eddie gets back. The bell above the door jingles, Richie looks up, and in a second Eddie is plopping back down into his seat and slinging off his now-full backpack. There’s a frazzled look in his eyes, like a deer in headlights.

He still looks good. He looks like he’s _doing_ good.

“Hey, man,” Richie says. He smiles, soft. “How’d it go?”

“Oh, it fucking sucked. But I did it.”

Richie beams. “Fuck yeah.”

Eddie tells him about it, and it _does_ sound like it fucking sucked. He tells Richie about how he told Myra that he wants a divorce, and that he isn’t reconsidering, and about the shouting match that resulted in the downstairs neighbor calling security—and Eddie leaving right then, of his own volition, but not before he managed to get some of his clothes (and he doesn’t really want anything else from there, anyway).

Richie hopes he never has to get divorced.

Partly because that would mean either divorcing Eddie, or leaving Eddie eventually to be with someone else. And Richie’s pretty sure there _is_ no one else.

“So what’s the next step?” Richie asks.

“Talking to my lawyer, I guess. It’ll be a pain in the ass to split up the assets, but at least there aren’t any kids or pets or anything to worry about.”

Richie blinks. “Kids?”

“Yeah. I said we don’t have kids.”

“No, I know. Did you want to have kids?” Richie doesn’t know why he’s asking, but he feels suddenly desperate to know.

“Myra wanted them,” Eddie says. “I didn’t. We, uh, probably would have ended up trying anyway.”

Richie must have made a face, because Eddie nods knowingly.

It’s not just _that,_ though. Richie’s _so fucking proud_ of Eddie. Because Eddie was basically trapped in Hell, because the people in his life made him think he had no other choice, and he managed to get out of it.

And Richie’s _so fucking glad_ Eddie gets to have what he wants (and so fucking lucky that what Eddie wants is Richie).

And Richie would follow him anywhere. “Where do you want to go next? ‘Cause I get it if you don’t want to stay here.”

“No, I kind of, uh.” Eddie says it like he’s embarrassed. “I like being here with you.”

It’s hard to keep the smile off his face, so Richie doesn’t. “Oh. Cool. Me too. You want to show me around?”

They take the Subway back to the hotel, so Eddie can drop off his rescued clothes. Then, Richie completely gives Eddie the reins. Eddie takes him back downtown on the Subway, and they get off at 42nd Street to visit the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park. They look down the rows of small, outdoor shops, in their glass kiosks draped in string lights, and Eddie tells Richie about how he always used to escape here, as a kid, when his mom first took him to the city. He was fourteen. It was just a year after that summer in Derry. Eddie probably didn’t remember Richie, then.

Strolling down the alleys, Richie’s hand finds its way to the small of Eddie’s back. It’s comfortable there. Of all the ways Richie could show Eddie he loves him, one of them springs to mind as the least intimidating. “Hey,” Richie says, suddenly. “I want to buy you something.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Seems romantic. What do you want?”

“Oh. Uh. Okay.” Eddie looks around. “I, uh, I don’t know. You want to buy me a hot chocolate?”

“Eds, I would _love_ to buy you a hot chocolate.”

Eddie picks out a shop, and while they wait in line, Richie notices that someone in the line next to them has a dog.

It’s small, and it looks like some kind of a chihuahua mix. It’s barking at a pigeon. “Hey. Hey, Eddie.”

“What’s up?”

“You see that dog?”

Eddie coos. “Aww.”

“That’s you.”

Eddie’s face falls in half a second. “I fucking hate you.”

“I don’t know, man. I’m not sure if I believe that, considering you said the opposite this morning.”

Eddie clams up.

“Heh, you’re blushing,” Richie points out.

“It’s cold out, dipshit.”

Richie gets a Nutella hot chocolate for himself and a regular one for Eddie, because Eddie’s not allergic to nuts, but he’s afraid of them anyway. They hang out for a few hours, brushing knuckles and never really holding hands, and when the sun sets and Richie looks over the lights of the city in the dark, he gets an idea. “Is there anywhere we can get, like, a bird’s eye view of the city?”

And so Eddie takes Richie to the Empire State Building. Richie buys two skip-the-line tickets on his phone, because _fuck no_ they’re not waiting. Richie’s a little afraid of heights—but whatever, because he’s afraid of a lot of things and he does them anyway—but not as much as he wants to see the city from up above, and not as much as he wants to be up high with Eddie.

The elevator goes up to the 86th Floor Observation Deck, and Eddie goes straight to the edge.

There are people all around, and they’re all paying attention to each other, or looking over the city. Richie realizes for the first time that he’s pretty much anonymous. If anyone recognizes him from his stand-up, they haven’t said anything.

Eddie’s leaning on the waist-high concrete railing, looking through the wire fence they have to keep people from jumping. He stares out into the distance, over his once-home and now just a stop on whatever journey he and Richie are starting together. Richie steps behind him, putting his hands on the ledge on either side of Eddie. When he rests his chin on the top of Eddie’s head, Eddie tries to look up. “What are you doing?”

“You’re short.” Looking out over the same view as Eddie, Richie decides this was worth it.

“I’m not fucking short. Fuck you. You’re tall.”

Richie licks his lips. His heart rate rockets right up. “Hey.”

Eddie turns around, trapped between Richie’s arms and the railing. Richie looks at his mouth.

 _Fuck it,_ Richie decides. _I love him._

“I really wanna kiss you,” Richie says.

“There are people around.”

“Yeah. I know. I think it’s okay, though?”

Eddie inhales. “You do?”

“Mhm.”

“Then okay.”

Richie leans down and presses his lips to Eddie’s.

And it’s okay.

Richie takes his hands off the railing to wrap his arms around Eddie’s waist. Eddie’s hands find Richie’s shoulders, clutching Richie deathgrip-tight, and it’s perfect.

Richie feels like he’s in a rom-com, if they made romcoms about people like him.  


* * *

  
A year ago, to the day, Eddie was probably in bed with Myra, quietly losing his mind and fighting the looming knowledge that he didn’t love his wife.

Now, he looks at Richie’s face in the dim light from the hotel lamp, and there’s nothing to fight anymore. There’s nothing to run from.

He can hear Richie’s heartbeat, where he rests his head on Richie’s bare chest. He can feel his own. “Hey, Rich?”

Richie’s been carding his fingers through Eddie’s hair. He stops, to scratch gently at Eddie’s temple. “Yeah?”

“What’s next?”

Richie fingers move down Eddie’s neck. His hand slides flat down Eddie’s back, over the back side of Eddie’s scar. “I don’t know. We could go anywhere you want.”

“Pick somewhere.”

Richie thinks, looking up at the ceiling. “Chicago, maybe? Maybe I could get my shit together, next.”

“I’ve never been to Chicago,” Eddie says. He yawns. “I want to.”

“Cool. You wanna drive there?”

“Yeah, obviously.”

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by Jacket
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://geislieb.tumblr.com/)/[twitter](https://twitter.com/1990reddie)


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